Oehms Classics and Oper Frankfurt continue to buck the prevailing record-company trend in releasing primarily CD recordings of its performances. The appearance of its Ring on DVD offered an exception; the pictures throughout the booklet of this new Ariadne auf Naxos made me eager to see Brigitte Fassbaender’s production, during the open run of which in October 2013 this set was recorded. As a sound-only recording it also faces stiffer competition for anyone interested in it as more than just a souvenir of those performances.

Where it scores very highly is in the conducting of Sebastian Weigle, Frankfurt’s Music Director since 2008. This is a fluid and flexible account of the score, light on its feet in the comedy but also willing to explore the mysterious Hofmannsthalian depths. There’s plenty of detail to be heard in Oehms’s recording, with the chamber forces sounding unusually full-bodied – the playing from the Frankfurt Opern- und Museumsorchester is also excellent.

It says a great deal for the company that the cast is largely drawn from its permanent ensemble but few of the singers benefit from sound that has clearly opted for close-up focus rather than offering much air around the voices, emphasising the vibrato of the higher ones, in particular, while also strangely keeping Michael König’s impressively reliable if hardly luxurious Bacchus set rather far back.

Camilla Nylund’s Ariadne would, I suspect, be more seductive in the theatre, but she sings securely and communicates the character’s transformation persuasively. Brenda Rae’s Zerbinetta, meanwhile, offers a voice that has agility and character, and none of the brittleness of some coloratura sopranos. Claudia Mahnke is a suitably impassioned and ardent Composer, although I did on occasion wish for the intensity to let up a little. Harlequin is usually one of the easier roles to cast in this opera but Daniel Schmutzhard’s baritone is short on the charm and mellifluousness one expects, while the veteran Franz Grundheber makes a rather rough-sounding Music-Master. William Relton’s Major-Domo favours slight hysteria over Viennese superciliousness, incidentally, presumably to fit in with the production.